Quick projects

Why yes, I have been sewing... in fact, with my due date just a week away, I've been in full-on crafting mode. When I'm not trying to wrap things up at work before my five-month leave, working on the nursery, finding the baby stuff that's scattered all around the house, and oh yeah, taking care of zoo camp and swim lessons and, um, dinner and laundry and the other million things that come along with having two older kids in the house.

So yes, I've been sewing, just not so much blogging :) Anyway, a few of the projects will stay top-secret until the baby's arrival.

But here are two quick projects that I can share now.

First up, a baby project... trimmed prefolds. If you're not familiar with cloth diapering and specifically prefold sizing, a quick primer. Prefolds are those big squares of cloth that your mom may have used on you, or that your grandmother almost certainly used on your mom. Now, you might ask, "I know cloth diapers have come a long way, but how much innovation can you put into a big square of cloth?" Well, quite a bit, as it turns out. Gone are the pins and plastic pants of yesteryear, in favor of Snappis and cute, soft, and durable PUL covers.

One more recent innovation is the concept of "sized" or "perfect fit" prefolds. See, traditional prefolds are relatively long and narrow. Most parents work around this by folding down the extra length. This works fine, but it does leave a big ol' bump in either the front or back of the diaper, making it bulkier. "Sized" prefolds offer a simple solution: They are cut shorter, alleviating the need to fold down the extra length and therefore the extra bulk. The best-known "sized" prefolds are offered by Green Mountain Diapers (also known as GMD), but there are now some other companies offering a similar concept, e.g. Diaper Junction and Nicki's Diapers.

Thing is, the "sized" prefolds are in somewhat high demand, so while they certainly aren't expensive (usually about $1.50-$2.00 each), it's hard to find good deals. And I like good deals :) Especially since we have more than enough hand-me-down diapers for this baby, so if I'm going to buy anything else, it better be cheap.

I found a lady on craigslist selling brand new standard infant prefolds for $1 apiece. That's more like it. As it turns out, standard infant prefolds (usually sold with green thread on the edges) are the same width as the "newborn" size for most sized prefolds, just a little longer. Well, that's easy enough to fix in a minute or two at the serger. Here are two unprepped prefolds, one normal (on the bottom) and one that I trimmed (on the top):

Prefolds shrink quite a bit when they're initially washed. Here are two trimmed prefolds, a prepped one on top and an unprepped one on the bottom:

Two prepped prefolds, a trimmed one on top and a normal one on the bottom. The trimmed one is maybe 1" or 2" shorter than the normal one. We used normal prefolds on Noob, and folded down about 1" to 2" for his first three months, so I'm thinking these should fit just about perfectly, no need to fold down.

If you're wondering about specific measurements, the untrimmed prefolds were about 12" wide and 16" long. I trimmed off 3" to make them 13" long prior to prepping. After prepping, the trimmed prefolds are about 11" wide by 10" long. This is very similar to the dimensions given for newborn sized prefolds on the sites I mentioned above.

By the way, this same trick works to turn premium prefolds into medium sized prefolds. Noob wore that size from about 13 months (when he outgrew the standard infant prefolds) till potty training shortly after 2 years, and still had some room to grow in them.

I also took the trimmings and serged them together in pairs, to make doublers. We'll see how they work.

One last really quick and semi-related project. Littles got a big dollhouse for her birthday, but felt that the bedding on the included bed was not good enough for her dolls.

So I had her pick out some flannel, cut it to size, and serged the edges for a new blanket and pillow. The stuffing on the pillow? Trimmings from a prefold :)

It all took just a few minutes and made my little girl very happy. Perfect :)

Choo-choo's

As previously noted, Noob is obsessed with trains these days. And he is also potty training. The combination of these two things makes for a lot of fun at bedtime, when he wants to wear his Thomas the Tank Engine underwear ("choo-choo's") to bed, fights getting a diaper on, and then asks to go potty (requiring full diaper removal) a bunch of times before he actually goes to sleep.

To alleviate this problem, I decided to sew him some Thomas training pants for overnights.

I wanted to use the same Trimsies Trainer pattern that I used for his training pants for school (which have worked out well and are still in use at naptime, BTW). But I also really wanted to use some Zorb II quadfold inserts that I made a long time ago, because Zorb II has been the only fabric I've been able to use consistently overnight without stink issues. The Trimsies Trainer pattern is so trim that I can't use normal inserts with it, and I don't have any Zorb II left to make Trimsies inserts with it.

Instead, I pulled out my old standby, the Darling Diapers Unlimited pattern. It has a side snap option, and many people say that any side snapping diaper can be pulled up/down like training pants.

The end result...

Pattern: Darling Diapers Unlimited, side snapping. I added about an inch to the rise of the medium size to make this more of a medium/large.
Outer: Thomas the Tank Engine woven cotton (eBay seller)
Hidden layer and wings: Old t-shirt
Inner layer: Cotton velour

No PUL, so this is a fitted diaper, requiring a cover. I made it a pocket fitted so I could adjust the absorbency as needed. I bet this would catch a pee on its own as a daytime trainer, but for nights, I stuff it with one of those Zorb II quadfolds.

Unfortunately, I don't love the fit of the side snapping version of this pattern. (I think it would work better if I had put in front elastic. I meant to, but forgot. Oops.) And the wings are not really stretchy enough to facilitate pulling it up/down. But it's perfectly functional as a diaper, just not so much as a trainer. And Noob prefers it to his other diapers, so, good enough!

 

I also made some Thomas fleece longies out of the leftover fleece from making Noob's nap mat. Katrina pattern, size large. Unfortunately, I wasn't paying attention when I cut these out, and I made probably the worst cut that I possibly could have... the only pictures of Thomas ended up all crammed into the butt area on the back, and one side was upside down. Oops. But again, perfectly functional, and Noob loves these longies and insists on putting them on whenever he sees them. Kids this age are so forgiving of sewing goofs.

 

Finally, not train related, but I sewed up some fleece shorties out of Army fleece. (I've mentioned this before, but my husband is former Army.) Katrina pattern, size large again. I actually paid attention while cutting this time :) and these turned out well.

Front:

Back:

Tag:

The inseam is a little long. I've left these unhemmed for now, but I think I might go ahead and hem them a bit. I don't want to lose the "Army Strong" on the right leg, though.

 

More baby gifts

Seriously, there will be a lot of these this year. Two of my close friends have already had babies, and there are three more due between now and September. Plus myself, of course!

One of the remaining three had her baby shower yesterday. She is the daughter of a good friend of ours, the kids' regular babysitter, and just an all-around awesome young lady, so I wanted to do something really nice for her. She decided to cloth diaper as well (seriously, I don't proselytize cloth diapering, but it's really cool that so many of my friends are coming to it on their own) and that made it easy! And since she's expecting a girl, this gave me a great excuse to use up a ton of girly PUL that I got on clearance from Fabric.com a while back. (If Q is a girl, I'm really going to have some fun :)

Top row:
Rocket Bottoms In A Snap cover, size NB. Outer is Soft 'n Comfy fabric from Joann's. Inner is PUL from Fabric.com.
Rocket Bottoms pocket, step 1 (NB/small). Outer is PUL from Fabric.com. Inner is alova suedecloth from Joann's.

Bottom row:
Witteybums cover, size small. All PUL, purchased directly from another sewing mama.
Rainy Days fitted, step 1 (NB/small). Outer is french terry, hidden layer of bamboo fleece, inner layer of bamboo velour, soaker of bamboo fleece topped with bamboo velour. All purchased directly from other sewing mamas.

Behind: Wetbag, made with PUL from Fabric.com. I usually sew the zipper on top of these, but decided to try it on the side, like this video tutorial from Wazoodle shows. I love how it turned out!

How did they turn out? Well, I think the In A Snap cover is really tiny. It may fit for the first few weeks, but I'll likely make another one in size small. On the flip side, the Rainy Days fitted seems quite large. I made it with Lastin elastic -- it's a little trickier to work with than regular polybraid, because if you stretch it as tight as it will go, it will be way too tight. But I may not have stretched it enough on this diaper. I'll have to keep experimenting, because the nice thing about Lastin (as the name implies) is that it lasts a lot longer, rather than getting all stretched out like polybraid does over time. Anyway, that diaper should work fine, it may just be more of a small/medium than a newborn/small. The other two patterns, I already sewed up for one of my other friends, and they turned out well this time around, too.

Close-up of the "handmade" tag on the In A Snap cover. I really like these for adding a bit of a professional touch. They're also a handy spot to put size tags -- I don't always put size tags on stuff I sew for my kids, because I can remember what size things are, but for gifts for other people, I figure it might be helpful.

Newborn diapers and big sister gifts

One of my good friends just had her second baby a few weeks ago. She's cloth diapering, so I figured I'd try out some newborn diaper patterns!

If you're planning to sew newborn diapers, you must check out the Mama Kat Diapers blog. She reviews tons of newborn diaper patterns (including many free ones) and provides pictures and great information.

I knew my friend was planning to use prefolds and covers, so I wanted to sew a few more covers for her. The first one I made uses the Bramblestitches pattern, size newborn. Here is a link to the pattern, and here is a link to the magazine article explaining how to sew it.

The outer is a poly print, from the Top Shelf Fabrics destash.

I used a "Handmade" tag with size tag on the back :)

The inner is PUL. I chose to sew it with the fabric side facing out, to be softer on tender newborn skin, but you could also sew it with the shiny side facing out if you wanted it to be wipeable. I've done that before, on a cover I sewed for Noob, and had no irritation problems.

Although this was newborn size, it turned out pretty big. I'd say it's more like a small size.

I think it would work well over a Snappi'd or pinned prefold. But I know many people like to just trifold prefolds and stick them in a cover. I didn't know which camp my friend is in, so I decided to sew her another cover that facilitated trifolding.

I settled on the Witteybums pattern. I forgot to post pictures of this, but I sewed up this pattern months ago for some diapers for Noob, and absolutely loved it. I did an all-in-two style diaper for Noob, but the pattern also has a neat option to make a cover with flaps to secure a trifolded prefold, very similar to a Flip cover.

I first made a newborn size cover. I knew from the diapers I sewed for Noob that this pattern has a very narrow crotch. Since it needs to fit over a prefold, I widened the crotch about 1/4", per the Mama Kat Diapers blog.

It turned out teeny tiny! Here it is next to a Proraps newborn cover. Noob was 8 lbs 11 oz at birth, and we used the Proraps covers for only about a week, until his umbilical cord fell off. Then we moved on to larger covers. The Witteybums newborn cover is even smaller than the Proraps! I'd say it's more like preemie size.

I'm going to keep it and see if it fits Q at all, but I decided to sew a small size cover for my friend. This time, I widened the crotch by about 1/2". Here are the two completed covers.

Insides of the covers. The outer is just a single layer of PUL, and then the flaps are PUL as well.

Here's the small cover with a standard infant (green edge) prefold trifolded inside:

Comparison shots of a Bummis Super Whisper Wrap size small (on the left) with the Bramblestitches NB cover (middle) and Witteybums small (right). The BSWW was one of my favorite covers for Noob. It fit him from when we stopped using the Proraps at 1 week old to a few months old. The Bramblestitches cover, in particular, has a very similar shape to the BSWW.

Finally, I decided to make my friend one pocket diaper to try out. This is a Rocket Bottoms step 1 diaper. I really like the idea of two-step diapers like this, especially when I'm sewing my own. The "step 1" diaper has a snap-down rise, allowing you to adjust it to fit from roughly 7-21 pounds. So it's designed to fit newborns (unlike one-size diapers, which are typically too bulky), but you don't put a ton of work into a diaper that's going to be outgrown in a few short weeks. Then there's a "step 2" that fits from roughly 18-40 lbs, so it fits even longer than the typical one-size diaper.

This was my first time sewing with loop fabric. Rather than just putting a narrow strip of aplix or touchtape on the front of the diaper, I put a big panel of loop fabric. Supposedly, this gives more adustability, since the tabs can be attached anywhere on the panel.

This was also my first time sewing with pre-cut aplix tabs, rather than cutting my own tabs from a strip of aplix. Very handy and professional-looking.

No pictures of the inner, but it's suedecloth (white butter suedecloth from Hancock's, my favorite!) with a modified welt pocket. For a soaker, I was hoping to use some of the Cotton Babies microfiber inserts that I have around the house, but they were just a little too wide. So I did three layers of heavy bamboo fleece, following the pattern included with the Rocket Bottoms pattern.

All three diapers together:

Of course, I couldn't forget the big sister! I made her a crayon wallet, with a personalized name tag on the front:

I got the fabric a while back, on clearance at Walmart! They have some cut fat quarter bundles that include contrasting fabrics. Perfect for this crayon wallet, which calls for a contrasting fabric for the pockets on the inside.

I goofed, and made the pockets for the crayons (on the left) too long. Weird, because I followed this tutorial exactly and it shows the shorter pockets, and when I made this for another friend a few months ago, I ended up with shorter crayon pockets. Oh well. It makes the wallet slightly harder to close properly, and it makes it harder to get the crayons out (you kinda have to push them out from the bottom of the pocket), but it works OK. One nice thing is that then the crayons don't "color" all over the rest of the interior of the crayon wallet.

This was all lots of fun to sew and I love how everything turned out!

Do-it-yourself maternity clothes

I hate buying maternity clothes. They seem like such a waste of money, especially considering Q is probably our last baby.

Unfortunately, even though this is my third pregnancy, I don't have a ton of usable maternity clothes. Noob was born in January, and Littles was born in June but in northern California, so a lot of my maternity clothes are long sleeved. They're not doing me much good now that it's already in the 80s in Texas! And I don't really want to hide my bump in bulky t-shirts for the next three months.

Now, cheap maternity clothes... that, I could do!

Enter Joann's clearance, and my local thrift store. (Please ignore my terrible hair and tired look in these pictures. I had to take them late on Saturday night because I'm on a business trip this week.)

The shirt is a "boyfriend T" that was on clearance at Joann's for $3, plus I had a coupon for 25% off. Not bad. I made it into a rouched maternity shirt, using the instructions on this blog. It's super easy. You basically sew elastic into the seam allowance on the sides of the shirt, which makes it more fitted around your belly.

I got a size large -- normally I wear a small or a medium. But it's still a little short on me, especially after making it rouched. It would've worked better for me earlier in this pregnancy, or with my earlier pregnancies, where my belly didn't grow as quickly. Oh well, not much money spent, and it'll probably work well postpartum!

The pants are from one of my local thrift stores. I do most of my shopping for kids' clothes there, and on a trip a few months ago, I found that they have a whole maternity section, too. Even better, they do "99 cent Mondays," every Monday, where all items with a certain tag color are 99 cents. So I got these pants for just 99 cents!

These are actually maternity pants, in my correct size, but the elastic waistband was all stretched out, so they didn't stay up. But that's easy enough to fix!

I debated a couple of different methods, and finally decided to sew in a Bella Band. Bella Bands are tubes of fabric designed to use over unbuttoned pre-pregnancy pants, so that you can get more wear out of them. I also use them to hold up maternity pants that like to fall down... so a no-sew solution to this particular problem would have been to just use the Bella Band over the pants. Done.

But I find it to be a pain to deal with two separate pieces of fabric whenever I have to go to the bathroom (which is kind of often these days). And I happened to have an extra Bella Band. I bought a khaki-colored one at a consignment store for about $5 back when I was pregnant with Noob, and liked it enough that I asked for a navy-colored one for Christmas this year. I've used the navy-colored one a lot, because it goes so well with jeans, which is what I wear most of the time. So the old khaki one has just been sitting in my drawer. I figured I'd sew it into the pants, rather than leaving it as a separate piece.

This was super easy as well. I made four evenly-spaced marks on the Bella Band, as well as the waistband of the pants. I turned the Bella Band inside out and put it over the waistband of the pants, then matched up the marks I'd made. Finally, I secured the Bella Band to the pants using a zig-zag stitch, stretching the Bella Band evenly as I sewed. (The marks helped me do this.) I could've cut off the original waistband, but I left it, just in case I messed things up sewing in the Bella Band.

The final result:

 

I looooooooooove these! The pants are so comfortable. And you can wear the Bella Band all sorts of different ways -- I actually have it folded in half in the picture above, but you can wear it all the way up over your belly, or fold it even more so it sits below your belly. Really versatile as your bump grows, and then shrinks again postpartum. No saggy maternity pants here!

Of course, Bella Bands normally retail for around $30, so it's hardly cost-effective to buy them just to sew into pants :) But as I said, I got this one for cheap at a consignment shop. And this blog also has instructions for DIY belly bands, or for converting regular pants to maternity pants. So, lots of cheap options for doing something like this.

In addition to the above, I got a couple of actual maternity shirts on clearance at Joann's as well, again for $3 minus 25% off. They fit fine as-is, but I decided to make these rouched as well, to add a nice little detail.

Love these shirts! They fit so nicely, especially rouched. I bought mediums, and they have enough length that I think they may last me till Q's birth!

By the way, the shorts I'm wearing were another "99 cent Mondays" purchase, so this whole maternity outfit cost just a little over $3. Now that, I don't mind paying!

The final stash of stupid cloth training pants (now even stupider, thanks to Noob!)

I finally finished the last two a few days ago. Here's all of them (minus one, the white one with the stars on the tabs, shown in this post -- it was still at school):

Closer up... the one on the left here is one of the two new ones, and the one on the right I made a few weeks ago. Same PUL -- you can see how it's faded with washing in the one on the right. But it doesn't look too bad when it's not side-by-side with a brand-new one :) These both have microchamois tabs and microfleece inners.

The one on the right here is another new one. "Later Gator" PUL print body, ribbed knit tabs (from Joann's), microfleece inner:

The one on the right here is the second one I sewed, but I never posted a picture of it. It's the one with crushed panne tabs/inner, before I decided crushed panne was too much of a PITA to work with :)

I've posted all of these before, but just to do close-ups...

So of course, now that I'm done sewing these, Noob has stayed completely dry at school for much of this week! LOL! That is why I didn't buy these suckers at retail prices! I'll keep some around for naps/nighttime, for sure, and I'm just trying to decide if I should save the rest for Q (since it's a pretty boyish stash, and Q may or may not be a boy) or sell them off...

Noob's nap mat

One of my earliest posts on this blog was about a nap mat that I made for Littles to take to preschool  It worked perfectly! She ended up using it until just a few months ago, when we stopped having her nap at school.

Between first trimester fatigue, the holidays, our China travels, and sewing Noob's training pants stash, I didn't have time to make a nap mat for Noob before he started preschool, so he's been sleeping on Littles' mat. But pink ballerinas aren't really "him," so I always planned to make him a new mat as soon as I had some time.

Let the record show that I originally planned to make this using a bunch of fleece from the great Joann's remnant bin sale of about a year ago, since I really need to use it up! But Noob is obsessed with trains as of late, so just before I started sewing the mat, my husband said, "Hey, why don't you do a train theme?"  That meant scrapping the remnant bin fleece I had gotten for cheap and had around the house in favor of buying expensive licensed Thomas the Tank Engine fleece (since, oddly, it's very hard to find train fleece that does not feature Thomas) -- but what can I say. My husband made me do it!

I made this in basically the same way that I did Littles' nap mat (documented extensively in the other post), with a few minor changes, which I'll get to later. The end result...

Bottom of the nap mat and straps: Royal blue fleece (I was able to use some from the great remnant bin sale here)

Top of the nap mat: Flannel

Pillowcase: Thomas the Tank Engine woven cotton. (I got this a while back as part of a bigger fabric order, figuring I'd find some use for it!) I used my serger on this, rather than doing French seams like I had to do on Littles' nap mat in my pre-serger days -- sooooooooo much faster.

Blanket: Thomas the Tank Engine fleece, from Joann's

Here's a close-up of the pillow and top of the blanket. I made the blanket a little longer than I did with Littles', so it can come up and over the pillow a bit. But I didn't attach it to the side of the nap mat at the top, so it can fold down, as shown here (and above).

Rolled up...

The light blue piece is a shoulder strap -- a new feature I added on this one. It's just a single layer of fleece, about a yard long. I thought that might be too short, but if anything, it's too long. It's very thin, by design: It lies under the mat when it's unrolled, so I didn't want there to be a big bump when Noob lay down. I don't love it, but it works OK for now, and it'll be easy enough to cut off in the future if I decide I really hate it.

Close-up of the name tag:

The light blue is fleece again. Gahhhh, this picture makes it look like the edges are really crooked -- I promise they're not that bad in person. For the tag itself, I used printable fabric that I got on clearance at Joann's a while back. It's canvas material that you can stick in your inkjet printer and print on directly. It's not supposed to be washed, so we'll see if we remember to always unsnap the tag before washing :) If not, no big deal, it's easy enough to make another one of these.

By the way, the picture is of Noob riding on a high-speed train from Shanghai to Beijing :)

Overall, not my best work. You can't really tell from the pictures, but I had serious trouble sewing straight lines, for some reason! So there are a lot of places where the mat is kinda cockeyed. But it's definitely usable, and most importantly, Noob loves it. OK, he might not look like he's loving it in these action shots, but trust me, he was super excited about his new "choo-choos."